Real-time dynamics of soliton collision in a bound-state soliton fiber laser

• Main Authors: Liang Hu, Zhao Xiaoming, Liu Bohan, Yu Jie, Liu Yange, He Ruijing, He Jiangyong, Li Hongye, Wang Zhi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: De Gruyter 2019-12-01
• Series: Nanophotonics
• Subjects: molybdenum disulfide; soliton molecule; soliton collision; time-stretch dispersive fourier transform
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1515/nanoph-2019-0422

We experimentally investigated the soliton collisions between soliton molecules and deuterogenic solitons spontaneously generated on the continuous wave (cw) noise background in an ultrafast erbium-doped fiber laser mode locked with MoS2 saturable absorber (SA). The dynamics of the soliton collisions were observed using the time-stretch dispersion Fourier transform technique. The noise-induced deuterogenic solitons first undergo spectral broadening and wavelength shifting, then collide successively with a soliton molecule and eventually vanish. Within the simple collision framework, the spectral-temporal dynamics of soliton collision would help to unveil the self-stabilization mechanism of the soliton molecules in consideration of dispersive wave shedding. This nonlinear dynamics is similar to the soliton rain, except that complex condensed soliton phase is substituted with a soliton molecule.